The
Church, in the sense of organisation, authority, assets and membership,
preceded rather than followed the justifying doctrines of Christianity. As the
organisation and its needs changed so the ‘Testament of
God’ adapted accordingly.

In the 2nd century Jesus-lore was a popular and variegated literary form, competing with Greek romantic fiction. Political
considerations in the late 2nd century led the emerging Catholic church to
select just four gospels as 'orthodox' and reject many
others. After three centuries of wrangling, twenty-three
additional texts were accepted by the Church as
divinely inspired. The rest were declared 'pious
frauds' but in truth, the whole lot belongs to a genre
of literary FICTION.

Sin is the very foundation of Judeo/Christian
religion. With Sin the
Church devised the most successful protection racket
in history. The whole of humanity was criminalized through the doctrine
of Sin.

The gospel yarn began not with
the testimony of a disciple but with the musings
of someone who switched
the anticipated Jewish Messiah from future hope to "historic past". Mark's hero was a righteous man, adopted at his baptism as a son by God.